The decision to kick off its live motorsports with the Challenge Cup was an easy one in many ways, because the production company has been shooting and distributing the off-road races since Lucas Oil took over the series in 2009.

The final day of the season for the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series presented by GEICO will be the most significant day in the brief history of the MAVTV network.

That’s when the network will televise the Lucas Oil Challenge Cup races live from Lake Elsinore (California) Motorsports Park on Sunday, Oct. 27.

It will be the first live telecast of a motorsports event on MAVTV since Lucas Oil purchased the network in 2011. It’s also a benchmark for the future of the network.

“The decision to televise the Challenge Cup live was made the middle of this year,” said Jason Patison, MAVTV’s programming director. “Once SPEED transitioned to Fox Sports 1, we decided that we were going to be the new motorsports destination for automobile enthusiasts everywhere. To that end, we realized that we needed to bolster our live programming, and what better place to start than with the Lucas Oil Challenge Cup?”

The decision to kick off its live motorsports with the Challenge Cup and focus mainly on the race between the Pro 2 and Pro 4 trucks was an easy one in many ways, because the production company has been shooting and distributing the off road races since Lucas Oil took over the series in 2009.

As a result, Dave Wonser, production manager said, “We are very familiar with the ins and outs of shooting the event, the kind of delays that can occur and so on.

“The unpredictability of off-road racing can definitely present challenges with regards to timing,” Wonser said. “We’ll be building several features and stories to have on hand in case of such delays.”